Writing in the Mail and Guardian, 18 August 2000, the ANC
head of religious affairs, Cedric Mayson, sees ancestor-based African
spirituality as founded on enduring family lineages.

These form complex but traceable links "sourced in the
substratum of basic human spirituality that predates the emergence of all
organized religions. Invaders tossed it aside because it was not written down, .
. . but the strength of African (spirituality) was that it had never been
institutionalized.

Institutions could be defeated, spiritual experience
cannot. It continues to stir a critical mass of people with a holistic
experience of life that permeates visions, faith, experience, hope and
relationships, but is not tied down to books, buildings, and priesthoods.

Many who have joined the congregations of the imported
religions still carry with them the insights of their own ancestors. (African
Indigenous Spirituality - AIS) expresses a communal awareness . . . (It is an)
expression of community building relationships.

It prompts a faith defined by relationships not
possessions, by caring not by a creed, by enjoying human fulfillment not
adhering to orthodoxy . . . (It defines) morality not as an individual goodness,
but a cooperative project of survival. It depends on recovering a community
consciousness that thrives because people feel involved with one another.

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Few rob and cheat and kill in their own circle, or force
family members to live without income in the churches, temple, mosques or power
structures . . . (It) affirms the common ground of being, a common ground in all
humanity".

As a whole body of thought, Indigenous Spirituality guides
an African by encompassing all aspects of his/her life.

It provides a common bond among Africans and deals with
spiritual obligations, interpersonal relations and ritual observances through
four rites of passage, celebration and grief, law and ethics, and survival
activities. Out of these, comes out African socio-economic and
juridical-political institutions, structures and systems.

In contrast, some religions turn human interest away from
this world to the imaginary world to come by claiming through song and cliches
that we do not have a place we call home on this world (hatina musha panyika).
Such a religious position sees the condition of the soul after death as having
little or no relationship with the current condition of the Biological Body.

Indigenous Spirituality is centered on a being, and is
intended to procure, secure and address an African's well being, security and
protection, here and now ('iye zvino pano'). It does not curse the present and
yearn only for the future.

Afrocentrically, Mwari Musiki/uMdali, the Creator is not
considered as having gender specificity, nor conceived in human-like terms,
state and condition. Mwari Musiki/uMdali is the invisible and inherent Energy in
the indefinable universe, and the infinite source of the universe beyond the
concept of time and space. " . . . When any mind (grows) among us to adulthood,
it (grows) beyond . . . fables and (comes) to understand that there is indeed a
great force in the world, a force spiritual and able to shape the physical
universe, but that force is not something cut off (deposited in a place called
heaven), not something separate from ourselves.

It is an energy in us, strongest in our working,
breathing, thinking together as one people; weakest when we are scattered,
confused, broken into individual, unconnected fragments". - Ayi Kwei Armah, 'Two
Thousand Seasons'. In Yoruba, it is called Olodumare; in Gikuyu, Masai and
Wakamba (Kenyan ethnic languages) it is called Ngai. The Akan call it Onyame or
Onyankopon.

l Therefore, African Indigenous Spirituality is
essentially an acknowledgement and recognition of a supreme spiritual power of
life Energy. It is conceived as beginningless and endless, while the universe
co-exists with the life Energy.

l Akhnton, the 'black' monarch of Ancient Egypt who lived
1,300 years before Jesus Christ and many centuries before King David, preached
and lived a gospel of brotherhood and truth. He preached his belief in one
almighty invisible and formless power, which he called Aton. The "formless"
Power was seen as all-powerful, all caring and a life-giving energy.

l The capability to ascribe the universe to one supreme
power had been in practice by the Akan of Ghana, the Ife of Nigeria, the Dogoh
of Mali, the Nubia of Sudan, all the Bantu groups in Southern Africa and many
others, long before the Europeans arrived in Africa. Thus, the contemporary
belief in a Superior Spirit, so beloved by both Christians and Muslims has been
obvious and well known and practiced amongst Africans, whose religiousness goes
much further back than the Christian era.

l Africans do not pre-occupy themselves with having direct
rituals of 'worship' to the Creator, either at a social or an individual level.
A relationship with Mwari Musiki, the Creator is through the immediate environs
of one's ancestors practiced through the process of libation (kupira or kuteura)
directed towards one's ancestors while saying some words appropriate for the
occasion.

Nigeria: Outside the compound

"Pour libations for your father and mother who rest in the
valley of the dead. Do not forget to do this even when you are away from home.
For as you do for your parents, your children would do for you" - 'The Papyrus
of Ani' (New African, May 2001). The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and
Papyrus of Ani are the best surviving example of the texts that were created
around 1250 BCE during the Theban period (1570-1070 BCE).

l They represent the most complete and ornate examples of
ancient African social, religious, and spiritual thought yet discovered. They
are an artistic rendition of the mysteries of life and death. They are the best
surviving example of some 200 texts comprising the funerary scrolls that
accompanied deceased ancient Egyptians into the afterlife.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead, of which the Papyrus of Ani
is one, is composed of some 200 "chapters" of some of the earliest spiritual
writings of humanity. These original texts were known to the ancient Egyptians
as The Book of Going Forth by Day. They were discovered in Egypt and acquired in
1888 and hastily cut into even lengths and pasted onto wooden boards for
shipment to England as a collection of the British Museum before any translation
was undertaken. The documents are essential not only for their historic
significance, but also for an insight into the African religion and teachings
about life.

l "The Book of the Coming Forth by Day" is the oldest
written document existing to date on religion from which adoptions by many other
religions were made and grossly distorted. The Pyramid Texts preceded the
Pentateuch/Torah (Old Testament's first five books) by thousand years. The
Pentateuch is of an origin not older than 1,078 years, i.e. written from around
700 BCE. The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts had been written more than 3,400
years before the Bible. This proves the glorious African religious origins of
all 'universalised' religions in the world today. Some of the contents of these
ancient Egyptian teachings were adopted and distorted by Jewish copyists and
scribes.

l "Through 'Mhiravadzimu' or 'Kupira vadzimu'
(communication/connectivity with the ancestral spirits), the communication takes
the form of monologue although it is essentially conceptualized as a dialogue by
the participant. The eldest person speaks to the ancestors on behalf of the rest
of the gathering in a language that is full of imagery and rhythm. The
living-dead, whose spirits are believed to be caring for the living descendents,
are addressed as if they are present. The first breath-unit usually calls for
the attention of the ancestral spirits.

Fellow supplicants clap hands in agreement with the
leading poet. It is imperative for supplicants to hear what the leading poet
says so that they ratify his poetry with hand clapping and ululation.Clapping
rhythmically - during the recital means that people are of one accord. Women in
the end ululate to wrap up the poetic discourse.

In the absence of an audience, one can whisper a
dedication or briefing to ancestors in order to guarantee their cooperation" -
Professor Emmanuel Chiwome, 'A Critical History of Shona Poetry'.

l Eurocentric missionaries thought that the absence of any
direct worship of the Creator is the absence of divinity in the foundation of
African morals and customs. They mistakenly thought that Africans are either
atheist or spiritually immature.